All - Travel - Travel: 2005 - Seattle (2005)

May 30, 2005: Oregon to San Jose

Posted June 1, 2005 14:28 | Category: Seattle (2005) | #

I woke up Monday morning as we were about to arrive in Chico, CA. Here are some notes I wrote as I was riding the train:

11:19 am

The train ride is great except for two things: partiers and sleeping. Last night the lounge car was a little too boisterous for my comfort, with intoxicated passengers carrying on and making too much noise. I went to bed around 1am, but at that point we were twisting our way around the canyons near Dunsmuir, rocking side to side in a manner entirely unlike that of rocking a baby, and losing altitude so my ears kept needing to be popped. I tossed and turned trying to get comfortable without waking up too many neighbors, and in the process I felt a pop in my left hip and it is now slightly painful to walk on. I need to see the chiro about that.

Currently we're sitting in Jack London Square, Oakland. We're about 2.5 hours late, but I'm not sure why. Perhaps most of the delay was at night, because we were only about an hour late in southern Oregon. I'm continuing on to San Jose where I plan to catch the Caltrain home.

When I woke up around 5am we were about to pull into Chico. I'm guessing that there was a PA announcement which may have awakened me without me being conscious of it. It was just at dawn, which is another thing that might have awakened me, as I was by an east-facing window. Either way, I took a few pictures of the dawn and saw some very picturesque farm scenery.

Now that we're back in the bay area, there's not a lot to comment about the scenery as it's already so familiar. Still, it's interesting to see it from a different perspective. For example the stretch between Davis and Martinez crossed the delta along a different route than the freeway, so we were surrounded on both sides by swamp^H^H^H^H^Hwetlands. Similarly, I'm looking forward to crossing the lower end of the bay, which takes a different route than the roads.

Click the big picture to go to the set page on Flickr, or click on an individual photo. Or, you can view a slideshow of the photos.